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Reminiscence of
Charles Kingsley
by Ellis Yarnall

The heat of London in the midsummer of 1857, even to my
American apprehension, was intense. The noise of the streets
oppressed me, and perhaps the sight now and again of
freshly-watered flowers which beautify so many of the
window-ledges, and which seem to flourish and bloom whatever
the weather, filled me the more with a desire for the quiet of
green fields and the refreshing shade of trees. I had just
returned from Switzerland, and the friends with whom I had been
journeying in that land of all perfections had gone back to
their home among the wealds and woods of Essex. I began to feel
that sense of solitude which weighs heavily on a stranger in
the throng of a great city; so that it was with keen pleasure I
looked forward to a visit to Mr. Kingsley. A most kind
invitation had come from him, offering me "a bed and all
hospitality in their plain country fashion."

At four in the afternoon of a hot July day I started for
Winchfield, which is the station on the London and Southampton
Railway nearest to Eversley—a journey of an hour and a
half. I took a fly at Winchfield for Eversley, a distance of
six miles. My way lay over wide silent moors: now and then a
quiet farmstead came in view—moated granges they
might have been—but these were few and far between, this
part of Hampshire being owned in large tracts. It was a little
after six when I drew near to the church and antique brick
dwelling-house adjoining it which were the church and rectory
of Eversley. There were no other houses near, so that it was
evidently a wide and scattered parish. Old trees shaded the
venerable irregularly-shaped parsonage, ivy and creeping plants
covered the walls, and roses peeped out here and there. Mr.
Kingsley himself met me at the open hall-door, and there was
something in his clear and cheerful tone that gave a peculiar
sense of welcome to his greeting. "Very glad to see you," said
he. Then taking my bag from the fly, "Let me show you your room
at once, that you may make yourself comfortable." So, leading
the way, he conducted me up stairs and along a somewhat
intricate passage to a room in the oldest part of the house. It
was a quaint apartment, with leaden casements, a low ceiling,
an uneven floor—a room four hundred years old, as Mr.
Kingsley told me, but having withal a very habitable look. "I
hope you'll be comfortable here," said my host as he turned to
go—"as comfortable as one can be in a cottage. Have you
everything you want? There will be a tea-dinner or a dinner-tea
in about half an hour." Then, as he lingered, he asked, "When
did you see Forster last?"

"Six weeks ago," I said—"in London. He had just
received news of the vacancy at Leeds, and at once determined
to offer himself as the Liberal candidate. He went to Leeds for
this purpose, but subsequently withdrew his name. I gather from
his speech at the banquet his supporters gave him afterward
that this was a mistake, and that if he had stood he would have
been elected."

"Ah," said Kingsley, "I should like to see Forster in
Parliament. He is not the man, however, to make head against
the tracasseries of an election contest."

Some other talk we had, and then he left me, coming back
before long to conduct me to the drawing-room. Two gentlemen
were there—one a visitor who soon took leave; the other,
the tutor to Mr. Kingsley's son. Mrs. Kingsley came in now and
shook hands with me cordially, and I had very soon the sense of
being at one with them all. Our having mutual friends did much
toward this good understanding, but it was partly that we
seemed at once to have so much to talk of on the events of the
day, and on English matters in which I took keen interest.

India was naturally our first subject,
and the great and absorbing
question of the mutiny. I told what the London news was in
regard to it, and how serious was the look of things.
Kingsley said there must be great blame somewhere—that
as to the British rule in India, no man could doubt that it
had been a great blessing to the country, but the individual
Englishman had come very far short of his duty in his
dealings with the subject race: a reckoning was sure to
come. Oakfield was mentioned—a story by William
Arnold of which the scene was laid in India, and which
contained evidence of this ill-treatment of the Hindoos by
their white masters. Kingsley spoke highly of this book. I
said I thought it had hardly been appreciated in England.
Kingsley thought the reason was it was too
didactic—there was too much moralizing. Only the few
could appreciate this: the many did not care for it in a
novel.

Our tea-dinner was announced: it was served in the hall.
Mrs. Kingsley spoke laughingly of their being obliged to make
this their dining-room. The talk at the table fell on American
affairs. Sumner's name was mentioned. I said he was in London,
and that I had had a long conversation with him a few days
before. Would I give them his address? they asked: they must
have a visit from him. I said he would be glad to visit them, I
was sure, for when I told him I was coming here he said he
envied me. He was at present engaged in a round of
dinners—expected to go to France in August to stay with
De Tocqueville, but would be again in England in the autumn.
Kingsley spoke of Brooks's death—of the suddenness of it
seeming almost a judgment. I said Brooks, as I happened to
know, was thought a good fellow before the assault—that
he really had good qualities, and was liked even by Northern
men. "So we have heard from others," said Kingsley, "and one
can well believe it. The man who suffers for a bad system is
often the best man—one with attractive qualities."
Charles I. and Louis XVI. were instances he gave to illustrate
this. A recent article in the Edinburgh Review on
slavery was spoken of. I said it had attracted a good deal of
attention with us, because we saw immediately it could only
have been written by an American. Of slavery Mr. Kingsley spoke
in calm and moderate words. I told him his introductory chapter
to Two Years Ago showed that he appreciated the
difficulties with which the question was encumbered. He said it
would be strange if he did not see these difficulties,
considering that he was of West Indian descent (his grandfather
had married a West Indian heiress). He admitted that the result
of emancipation in the West Indies was not encouraging as it
regarded the material condition of the islands, especially of
Jamaica, and he was quite able to understand how powerfully
this fact would weigh on our Southern planters, and how it
tended to close their ears to all anti-slavery argument. They
could hardly be expected to look beyond this test of
sugar-production to the moral progress of the black race which
freedom alone could ensure.

Our pleasant meal being over, we strolled out on the lawn
and sat down under one of the fine old trees, where we
continued our talk about slavery. Mr. Kingsley said he could
quite believe any story he might hear of cruelty practiced upon
slaves. He knew too well his own nature, and felt that under
the influence of sudden anger he would be capable of deeds as
violent as any of which we read. This, of course, was putting
out of view the restraints which religion would impose; but it
was safe for no man to have the absolute control of others.

He left us to go into the house, and Mrs. Kingsley then
spoke of his parochial labors. She wished I could spend a
Sunday with them—"I should so like you to see the
congregation he has. The common farm-laborers come morning and
afternoon: the reason is, he preaches so that they can
understand him. I wish you could have been with us last Sunday,
we had such an interesting person here—Max Müller,
the great linguist and Orientalist. But we can't have pleasant
meets here: we have only one spare
room."

"How old is Max Müller?" I asked.

"Twenty-eight, and he scarcely looks to be twenty-two."

"How long has Mr. Kingsley been here?" I asked.

"Fifteen years—two years as curate, and then the
living becoming vacant, it was given to him."

She told me a funeral was to take place directly—that
of a poor woman who had been a great sufferer. "Ah, here it
comes," she said.

There was the bier borne on men's shoulders and a little
company of mourners, the peasantry of the neighborhood, the men
wearing smock-frocks. They were awaiting the clergyman at the
lichgate. Mr. Kingsley appeared at the moment in his surplice,
and the procession entered the churchyard, he saying as he
walked in front the solemn sentences with which the service
begins. It was the scene which I had witnessed in another part
of Hampshire some years before, when the author of The
Christian Year was the officiating clergyman. Mrs. Kingsley
and I joined the procession and entered the church. It was a
small, oddly-arranged interior—brick pavements,
high-backed pews, the clerk's desk adjoining the reading-desk,
but a little lower. Mr. Kingsley read the service in a measured
tone, which enabled him to overcome the defect in his utterance
noticeable in conversation. At the grave the rest of the office
was said, and here the grief of the poor mourners overcame
them. The family group consisted of the husband of the
deceased, a grown-up daughter and a son, a boy of fifteen. All
were much moved, but the boy the most. He cried
bitterly—a long wail, as if he could not be comforted.
Mr. Kingsley tried to console him, putting his arm over his
shoulders. He said words of sympathy to the others also. They
went their way over the heath to their desolate home. Mr. and
Mrs. Kingsley spoke of the life of toil which had thus ended,
and of the patience with which long-continued bodily pain had
been borne. It was clear that the popular author was first of
all a parish priest.

We now went into his study, where he lighted a long pipe,
and we then returned to a part of the lawn which he called his
quarter-deck, and where we walked up and down for near an hour.
What an English summer evening it was!—dewy and still.
Now and then a slight breeze stirred in the leaves and brought
with it wafts of delicate odors from the flowers somewhere
hidden in the deep shadows, though as yet it was not night and
the sweet twilight lay about us like a charm. He asked if I
knew Maurice. I did slightly—had breakfasted with him six
weeks before, and had seen enough of him to understand the
strong personal influence he exerted. "I owe all that I am to
Maurice," said Kingsley, "I aim only to teach to others what I
get from him. Whatever facility of expression I have is God's
gift, but the views I endeavor to enforce are those which I
learn from Maurice. I live to interpret him to the people of
England."

A talk about the influence of the Oxford writers came next:
on this subject I knew we should not agree, though of course it
was interesting to me to hear Mr. Kingsley's opinion. He spoke
with some asperity of one or two of the leaders, though his
chief objection was to certain young men who had put themselves
forward as champions of the movement. Of Mr. Keble he spoke
very kindly. He said he had at one time been much under the
influence of these writings. I mentioned Alexander Knox as
being perhaps the forerunner of the Oxford men. "Ah," he said,
"I owe my knowledge of that good man to Mrs. Kingsley: you must
talk with her about him." We joined the party in the
drawing-room, and there was some further conversation on this
subject.

At about ten o'clock the bell was rung, the servants came
in, prayers were said, and the ladies (Mrs. Kingsley and their
daughter's governess) bid us good-night. Then to Mr. Kingsley's
study, where the rest of the evening was spent—from
half-past ten to half-past twelve—the pipe went on, and
the talk—a continuous flow. Quakerism was a subject.
George Fox, Kingsley said, was his
admiration: he read his Journal
constantly—thought him one of the most remarkable men
that age produced. He liked his hostility to Calvinism. "How
little that fellow Macaulay," he said, "could understand
Quakerism! A man needs to have been in Inferno himself to
know what the Quakers meant in what they said and did." He
referred me to an article of his on Jacob Boehme and the
mystic writers, in which he had given his views in regard to
Fox.

We talked about his parish work: he found it, he said, a
great help to him, adding emphatically that his other labor was
secondary to this. He had trained himself not to be annoyed by
his people calling on him when he was writing. If he was to be
their priest, he must see them when it suited them to come; and
he had become able if called off from his writing to go on
again the moment he was alone. I asked him when he wrote. He
said in the morning almost always: sometimes, when much pushed,
he had written for an hour in the evening, but he always had to
correct largely the next morning work thus done. Daily
exercise, riding, hunting, together with parish work, were
necessary to keep him in a condition for writing: he aimed to
keep himself in rude health. I asked whether Alton Locke
had been written in that room. "Yes," he said—"from four
to eight in the mornings; and a young man was staying with me
at the time with whom every day I used to ride, or perhaps
hunt, when my task of writing was done."

A fine copy of St. Augustine attracted my attention on his
shelves—five volumes folio bound in vellum. "Ah," he
said, "that is a treasure I must show you;" and taking
down a volume he turned to the fly-leaf, where were the words
"Charles Kingsley from Thomas Carlyle," and above them "Thomas
Carlyle from John Sterling." One could understand that Carlyle
had thus handed on the book, notwithstanding its sacred
associations, knowing that to Kingsley it would have a
threefold value. My eye caught also a relic of curious
interest—a fragment from one of the vessels of the
Spanish Armada. It lay on the mantelpiece: I could well
understand Kingsley's pleasure in possessing it.

At the breakfast-table the next morning we had much talk in
regard to American writers. Kingsley admitted Emerson's high
merit, but thought him too fragmentary a writer and thinker to
have enduring fame. He had meant that this should be implied as
his opinion in the title he gave to
Phaethon—"Loose Thoughts for Loose
Thinkers"—a book he had written in direct opposition to
what he understood to be the general teaching of Emerson. I
remarked upon the great beauty of some of Emerson's later
writings and the marvelous clearness of insight which was shown
in his English Traits. Kingsley acquiesced in this, but
referred to some American poetry, so called, which Emerson had
lately edited, and in his preface had out-Heroded Herod.
Kingsley said the poems were the production of a coarse,
sensual mind. His reference, of course, was to Walt Whitman,
and I had no defence to make. Of Lowell, Mr. Kingsley spoke
very highly: his Fable for Critics was worthy of
Rabelais. Mr. Froude, who is Kingsley's brother-in-law, had
first made him acquainted with Lowell's poetry. Hawthorne's
style he thought was exquisite: there was scarcely any modern
writing equal to it. Of all his books he preferred the
Blithedale Romance.

We talked of Mr. Froude, whom Kingsley spoke of as his
dearest friend: he thought Froude sincerely regretted ever
having written the Nemesis of Faith. Mr. Helps, author
of Friends in Council, he spoke of as his near neighbor
there in Hampshire, and his intimate friend. Mr. Charles Reade
he knew, and I think he said he was also a neighbor: his
Christie Johnston he thought showed high original power.
Mrs. Gaskell we talked of, whose Life of Charlotte
Bronté had just then been published: Mr. Kingsley
thought it extremely interesting and "slightly slanderous." He
told me of the author of Tom Brown's School-days, a copy
of which, fresh from the publishers, was lying on his table.
Mr. Hughes is now so well known to us
I need only mention that Mr. Kingsley spoke of him as an old
pupil of Arnold's and a spiritual child of Maurice. He spoke
most warmly of him, and offered me a letter of introduction
to him. I could not avail myself of this, having so little
time to remain in London.

I must mention, as showing further Mr. Kingsley's state of
mind toward Maurice, that he had named his son after him. He
spoke of the boy as being intended for the army: the family, he
said, had been soldiers for generations. "That is the
profession England will need for the next five-and-twenty
years." Of Forster he said, "What a pity he had not been put in
the army at the age of eighteen!—he would have been a
general now. England has need of such men." I note this as
showing the curious apprehension of war which he, an
Englishman, felt eighteen years ago, and which he expressed to
me, an American. How little either of us thought of the
struggle which men of English blood were to engage in in three
years from that time! How little I could dream that one of the
decisive battles of the world was so soon to be fought in my
own State, Pennsylvania!

Our morning was spent in all this varied talk, walking
partly on the lawn, partly in the study. His pipe was still his
companion. He seemed to need to walk incessantly, such was his
nervous activity of temperament. He asked me if it annoyed me
for him to walk so much up and down his study. The slight
impediment in his speech one forgot as one listened to the flow
of his discourse. He talked a volume while I was with him, and
what he said often rose to eloquence. There was humor too in
it, of which I can give no example, for it was fine and
delicate. But what most impressed me was his perfect simplicity
of character. He talked of his wife with the strongest
affection—wished I could remain longer with them, if only
to know her better. Nothing could be more tender than his
manner toward her. He went for her when we were in the study,
and the last half hour of my stay she sat with us. She is one
of five sisters who are all married to eminent men.

It occurs to me to note, as among my last recollections of
our talk, that I spoke of Spurgeon, whom I had heard in London
a short time before, and was very favorably impressed with. I
could not but commend his simple, strong Saxon speech, the
charm of his rich full voice, and above all the earnest aim
which I thought was manifest in all he uttered. Mr. Kingsley
said he was glad to hear this, for he had been told of
occasional irreverences of Spurgeon's, and of his giving way
now and then to a disposition to make a joke of things. Not
that he objected altogether to humor in sermons: he had his own
temptations in this way. "One must either weep at the follies
of men or laugh at them," he added. I told him Mr. Maurice had
spoken to me of Mr. Spurgeon as no doubt an important influence
for good in the land, and he said this was on the whole his own
opinion. He told me, however, of teaching of quite another
character, addressed to people of cultivation mainly, and to
him peculiarly acceptable. His reference was to Robertson's
Sermons: he showed me the volume—the first series
—just then published. The mention of this book perhaps
led to a reference by Mr. Kingsley to the Unitarians of New
England, of whom he spoke very kindly, adding, in effect, that
their error was but a natural rebound from Calvinism, that
dreary perversion of God's boundless love.

But I had now to say good-bye to these new friends, who had
come to seem old friends, so full and cordial had been their
hospitality, and so much had we found to talk of in the
quickly-passing hours of my visit. Mr. Kingsley drove me three
miles on my way to Winchfield. His talk with me was
interspersed with cheery and friendly words to his horse, with
whom he seemed to be on very intimate terms. "Come and see us
again," he said as we parted: "the second visit, you know, is
always the best."